Stickning, virkning, broderi och annat från mitt liv som tant

You know you’re from Sweden when… Part 1

1. Your family had to re-arrange a number of Christmas traditions when Arne Weise retired.2. You get nostalgic by thinking of the summer of 1994.3. You don’t rely on weather forecasts unless presented by John Pohlman.4. You thought Astrid Lindgren was immortal and was shocked and cried your heart out when she actually did die.5. You really want to attend the Nobel Prize Dinner.6. You get pissed off when Norwegians state that the peace prize is much more famous than the other Nobel prices.7. You go seriously sentimental when entering an IKEA store, outside the borders of Sweden.8. You love complaining about Sweden when you are there and state ”it’s much better in Sweden” when you are abroad.9. You secretly love the Eurovision Song Contest to pieces.10. You know at least 10 Abba songs by heart.11. You claim that you are not a royalist but actually do care what ”she” will wear on the Nobel Prize dinner.12. You are prone to stand in line without complaining.13. Whenever discussing international problems you always, without exception state that ”why don’t you do it like we do it in Sweden?”14. You know the names of a multitude of IKEA items.15. You know how to pronounce these names and sigh when non-Swedes don’t.16. You grew up in a house looking exactly like as if iit would have been in the IKEA-catalogue.17. You have a tendency to not divide words when you write in English, since ”särskrivning” is a sin.18. You don’t really care about winning as long as the Swedish beat the Norwegains and the Finish, no matter what the game/contest is. 19. You know that Sweden never actually will win the World Cup in Football, but keep partying anyway.20. When you don’t really consider silence a problem in social situations.21. When you find people from other cultures generally being rather loud. With the exception of the Finish.22. You wouldn’t even consider buying electrical items unless they are ”S”-marked.23. You consider the question ”how are you?” as a question that when posed, needs to be answered with a honest and thorough explanation of your mental health.24. You have serious difficulties crossing the street when there is a red light. Even when there are no cars. 25. You get guilty conciense from throwing things in the dustbin that could have been recycled.26. You take your shoes off when entering a house, and don’t get why non-Swedes find that funny.27. You know what the term ”dansband” refers to, but know that it is a losing battle explaining to non-Swedes what it is.28. You don’t consider a congregation of trees being a ”real” forrest unless it takes at least 20 minutes to drive through it.29. You use metric system and really don’t get why there are people out there who don’t.30. You consider ”schlager” being a proper music genre.31. You consider a fast and audioable intake of breath as a synonym to the word ”yes”.32. You find the ads for Coca Cola during Christmas completely useless since noone would consider drinking any other soft drink than ”julmust” during Christmas anyway.33. You consider Denmark and the Danish ”pretty continental”.34. You know that it is not true, but you like to believe that there is a massive difference between the taste of ”julmust” and ”påskmust”.35. You know that the most common cars in Sweden are not Volvo’s or Saab’s, but Ahlgrens Bilar.36. You can debate for hours the difference between the taste of the pink, the green and the white car in a pack of Ahlgrens bilar.37. You actually have a favourite colour of Ahlgrens bilar, and is pretty militant in your opinion on this point.38. You are not likely admit to having watched a full episode of Allsång på Skansen, but feel that the fact that they broadcast it every summer is soothing, and a notion that things remain in their normal state.39. You like things in general to be ”lagom”.40. It annoys the hell out of you that there is no good translation for the word ”lagom” in any language (except in Turkish, apparently)41. You consider Sweden being on the verge of annoyingly ”lagom”. Like a tetra pack of mellanmjolk, sort of.42. You have at one point, or more, during your childhood, attempted to fabricate something that you learnt how to make from watching ”Hajk”.43. While fabricating the thing mentioned in point 42. things went terribly wrong.44. You think that Sweden winning a gold in any type of World Championships require celebrating by getting really drunk and splash around in a large and famous fountain.45 You have a tendency to make Swedish verbs out of English nouns, and do not consider it slang or gramatically incorrect.46. Generally, you prefer writing in pencil.47. You’ve never seen a starbucks. 48. You have a summer house in the countryside. It has no running water or flushing toilet, but you can’t understand why no one wants to visit. 49. Making fun of Norway is a national institution. And vise versa. 50. You love Kalles Caviar. Everyone else outside scandanavia hates it.